The government-backed memory chip supplier Taiwan Memory Co (TMC, 台灣記憶體公司) plans to buy less than a 10 percent share in Elpida Memory Inc after it picked Japan’s biggest memory chipmaker as its partner in making memory chips and developing new technologies two months ago, a government official said yesterday.
This will help TMC hit its first-stage target of obtaining technological support via equity investments, making it possible to build its own capacity by consolidating local computer memory chipmaker’s output next year as scheduled.
“TMC is planning to buy a less than 10 percent stake in Elpida in the initial phase,” said Woody Duh (杜紫軍), director general of the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ Industrial Development Bureau.
Duh confirmed a report by the Chinese-language Commercial Times yesterday about TMC’s interest in acquiring a stake in Elpida, but he declined to reveal details.
The newspaper said Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) met and discussed the formation of the nation’s fifth memory chipmaker with TMC head John Hsuan (宣明智) and Minister of Economic Affairs Yiin Chii-ming (尹啟銘) on Thursday.
Liu may make a final decision on the government’s first capital infusion into TMC within two weeks, the report said.
Duh said TMC may apply directly for a government injection of NT$10 billion (US$305 million) from the National Development Fund (國發基金).
That amount is just one-third of the NT$30 billion TMC originally requested, allowing the government to hold as much as a 50 percent stake in the memory company.
Last week, Yiin said TMC was in talks with five to 10 potential investors in the information technology industry. TMC will begin operations in September after it finalizes its business plan next month at the earliest, Duh said.
That would match the government’s blueprint, unveiled in March, to form a state-owned memory company in six months. The government effort is a last resort to rejuvenate the nation’s shaky computer memory chip industry using taxpayer money.
Taiwanese computer memory chips have posted massive losses during the industry’s severe downturn as chip prices plunged on sagging demand amid economic recession and oversupply.
As of 6pm yesterday, prices for benchmark computer memory chips fell 2.99 percent to US$1.04 per unit, reversing previous gains, the pricing information posted on the Web site of market researcher DRAMeXchange Technology Inc’s (集邦科技) showed.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day